What Freshmen Eat
IN the fall of 1922 the trustees of the College deemed it advisable to establish a universal dining hall for the incoming class and to carry on the project for each group of freshmen. A place where all the neophytes should gather for meals and social purposes, that a broader acquaintanceship with their own classmen and a greater unity of class consciousness might develop.
Since the greater part of the necessary facilities were already established in College Hall, it was only a matter of a few renovations to place this project in working order. With its adoption passed the Commons of the sweat shirt era conducted under the effervescent joviality of John Aulis, where bread and butter was sold at a penny a chunk and a sheet of mealage was good for a four-course dinner.
Partitions were removed in the basement casting out the dark, damp passages and storerooms; making a large, light airy room all of which houses the iceboxes, ranges and baking ovens with their correlated paraphernalia. No more laundry. No more bottling of milk, a state law now making it necessary for the producer to do the bottling on his own premises when the product is to be used for drinking purposes. The sleeping quarters over the serving room were torn out and all this space thrown open to light and ventilation.
EMPLOYS NEARLY 100
Commons is now serving meals to some six hundred and fifty freshmen at a nominal charge. The matter of service being handled by fifty waiters, nearly as many more students are employed in the kitchen and serving room in the preparation of food and the washing of dishes. None of these figures include the thirty or more regular paid employees.
With the exception of ice cream which is usually served at least twice a week, our kitchen and bakeshop staffs produce all the foods used, from our own ranges and ovens.
A typical dinner composed of soup, roast beef, two vegetables, pie and milk and in sufficient quantity to feed seven hundred growing young men requires metriculous planning, well-apportioned and painstaking labor and an ample volume of foodstuffs. The soup is made from fresh vegetables and soup-stock and consumed at the rate, or tune if you will, of six ten-quart pails full at a time. Two hundred and fifty pounds of beef must be cut up, trimmed, roasted and carved ready to serve.
If string beans go with this meal it means about twenty-two gallons to be heated and seasoned. Eight bushels (three barrels) of potatoes are washed and peeled by machine, the eyes and spots removed by student help, then boiled and mashed. The boiling is not done as the housewife might do it, in pots or a kettle, but in specially constructed steamers where live steam does the work of the kitchen range and a dish partly full of water. If the meal is topped off with apple pie, seven bushels must be pared and cored, then made into more than a hundred pies. If the reader prefers blueberry pie then we will use eight gallons of berries and shove the assembled ingredients into one big oven for baking.
Milk is delivered daily at our door by a Vermont farmer, the average daily supply being two hundred thirty-two gallons and attaining a maximun some days of two hundred forty gallons, of which about three-fourths is bottled for drinking purposes.
ENOUGH FOR A BARBECUE
Perhaps some other figures on the quantity of foodstuffs might be interesting at this time. Salads are served three or four times a week and like all good salads must be dressed up in lettuce leaves. A crate or a crate and a half of iceberg lettuce will be used each time, depending on the type of salad. A crate of lettuce contains sixty heads. Eight gallons of oysters will make an oyster stew comparable to the old-fashioned New England kind and two hundred pounds of mackerel will feed the hungry horde in spite of the fact that some prefer meat. I hope that no übiquitous member of the Isaac Walton League rises to remark that fish that big always get away, hence no dinner for the boys.
There is circulated a story about a minister's son who once remarked that he was nineteen years old before he ever knew there was anything to a chicken but the neck. Dartmouth Freshmen discredit this statement however as they manage to demolish three hundred fifty pounds of fowl at one sitting. Thirty gallons of ice cream, forty-five pounds of bacon and one hundred fifty-three pounds of mince meat become the ingredients of any particular meal, and the boys who peel two hundred pounds of onions certainly know their vegetables.
The college health officers closely inspect the sources of our milk supply, test the raw milk for dirt, bacteriological content and butter fat and inspect our kitchens and storage bins. The foodstuffs and menus are constantly under the supervision of the Medical Director thus ensuring quality and quantity of nutriment as well as a balanced diet.
On the whole the enforced refectorial surroundings are fairly satisfactory. We do occasionally have a student to whom certain foodstuffs are organically poisonous. The men are quickly noted by the Medical Director and are given special attention in the avoidance of their antipathetical foods.
CABARET ON THE SIDE
An eight-piece orchestra composed of members of the Freshman class plays regularly at noon and night during meal hours, tending to create a more pleasing atmosphere.
In conjunction with the Freshman Commons the Dining Association conducts a cafeteria in the basement of College Hall, open to the patronage of upperclassmen, faculty and townspeople. This has its own kitchen where meats and vegetables are prepared and served, the pastry coming from the bakeshop which serves the Commons. The pool room which was in existence up to 1920 has been remodeled and now is the lunch room of the cafeteria with the kitchen in the rear. Jim Haggerty's famous grill is used as an overflow lunch room and has all necessary service counters and steam tables if occasions, such as Carnival and Commencement, demand their use.
All of the purchasing and the general conduct of the Cafeteria and the Freshman Commons, known as the Dining Association, is under the direct surveillance of A. P. Fairfield.
The Commons is fulfilling a very essential mission in the life of the College but the accommodations are rapidly becoming much overtaxed. Feeding six hundred and fifty persons in a room that seats only four hundred is far from a satisfactory condition and the location and appointments of the Cafeteria are not the fruition of an idealist's dream. We may always hope for the better however and occasional mumblings predict a new and more ornate structure, elaborate in appointments, beautiful in design and scientific in arrangements, on a more impressive site in the building group of the College and catering to the diversified needs of the College community.
A TABLE AT COMMONS
THE WRONG SLEEVE
